


I Promise It's Not A Basement

by ThroughTheTulips



Category: Jessica Meats
Genre: I blame end of long fic giddiness, I wrote it in one go and there is so much wrong with it, but I mentioned it before I edited and so here you go, it's so bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 19:59:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4759103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThroughTheTulips/pseuds/ThroughTheTulips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So exclamation is finishing up a very long awesome fanfic and the following happened in the comments:</p><p>Madam_maddie: I would like ten of you please. We have a supply and demand for good stories and right now we have an underwhelming supply of good stories so if u could just asexually reproduce and get into all the fandoms so i can have all of your talent and fanfics at my disposal thatd be great. Just sign the dotted lign</p><p>Exclamation: Sometimes I worry that someone's going to kidnap me and lock me in a dark room and threaten not to feed me unless I type up chapter after chapter of fanfic.  Now I'll have to worry about being a subject of cloning experiments too.</p><p>Me: No, see, we just have to go find au yous to lock in the basement.</p><p> </p><p>So really this is Maddie's fault and I take no blame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exclamation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exclamation/gifts), [madam_maddie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madam_maddie/gifts).



> The second chapter is the original version of this fic, which I changed because of peer pressure and I'm terribly sorry. There's only one small change, which is who Jess is married to and why.

On top of everything, it was raining.

Jess tried to ignore it as she threw her weight against the tire iron, wrestling with a rusty lug nut. Rain wasn’t the worst thing to happen today. It didn’t even come close. That honor went to the disc in her handbag, the collected work of a detective she’d paid to follow her husband this past week. Jess had been worried about an affair. Instead Collin was hanging around seedy pubs looking for muscle.

For a killer, actually. Her husband was trying to have her murdered.

It was ridiculous. Maybe the advance on her new book was big, but it was nothing compared to what she could earn in the future. Collin couldn’t see past the six figure check to the real payout. If she were writing this murder mystery, he’d wait until she sold the movie rights to find an assassin.

Then again, she hadn’t married Collin for his brains. She hadn’t meant to marry him at all. Her cousin invited her to a Teen Wolf convention in Vegas- gold seats complete with private meet and greet- and they’d done a bit too much celebrating. Jess got all the way home before finding the marriage license in her luggage. Then Collin had been so charming, so interested in flying over and giving marriage “the old American try”, and she’d just… gone along.

Not exactly her finest hour.

Still, she’d caught on in time. The police were probably arresting him right now, and the publicity could only help sell books. She would be fine. Maybe her pride stung, maybe she wondered how she could have been so foolish, but she would move on. Lesson learned. No need to-

“Hey! E- I mean, uh, ma’am, can you come here for a sec?”

Jess blew wet bangs from her face and looked up. A woman stood on the sidewalk, rain streaming down her red pigtails. She had an oversized golden retriever by her side. A second look showed the dog’s harness, and Jess scrambled to her feet. “Are you all right?” she said, coming around the boot. “Is your dog turned around? I’m afraid I’ve got a flat, but I can call you a cab.”

The woman blinked at her, then at the dog. Her face split in an embarrassed smile. “My eyes are fine, it’s my head that’s broken. You’re Jessica Meats, aren’t you? The writer?”

A warm flush filled Jess’s chest. She didn’t get recognized often, even by her pen name. “I am, yes. You’re a reader, then?”

“Oh man, you have no idea,” the woman said, still blushing. “I’m pretty much your biggest fan. Not like you don’t have a lot, I mean Lady X probably beats me for comments and honestly I couldn’t have gotten the TDT without Echo’s help, but I’m the one who found this ‘verse so I think that tips me over the top.”

Nothing she said made sense. That should have set off some kind of alarms, but Jess found herself intrigued. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Right, yeah, just…” Something beeped. The woman looked down at a wide flat watch on her wrist. Green numbers were counting down from the low hundreds, one per second. She bit her lip. “So, uh, hi. I’m Sam, this is Wellsy . We’re from another dimension and we’d like to take you back with us. Everything’s all set up, you won’t have to get a job or anything and I swear we won’t lock you in a basement. Not actually, I mean it’s a basement apartment but you have your own door and stuff. Will you come?”

Any reasonable person would run screaming for the hills.

Writers were not often considered reasonable people.

“Is this a one-way trip?” Jess asked instead of backing away slowly. “Can I go look and come back?”

“Um. No?” Sam sounded apologetic. “You’re actually about to die in this verse, it’s why we picked it. Some asshole in a fuel truck slams into you while you’re changing the tire.”

That gave her a nasty jolt. “What, I just die?”

“Yeah, it’s why I only have- shit- two and a half minutes to convince you. The TDT bubble bursts when your time is up. That’s Temporary Dimensional Transit, this thing I’ve got here.”

Jess looked over her shoulder. She thought she could hear a truck, though that could have been her imagination. “Won’t the police be worried when they don’t find my body? If I came?”

Blue eyes lit with laughter. “Nope. The driver has a, uh, friend with him. In the cab. There’s a pretty hot fire, they don’t recover much. Even if you stay there’s not enough to prove there was more than one woman, so you might as well come with.”

“What happens if I just go somewhere else before the truck comes?”

“You crash coming back from your husband’s trial and I get in, like, so much trouble with the Temporal Authorities,” Sam confessed. “You’d be okay in our world because I’m bringing you to my timeline, but here temporal physics will just start finding increasingly unlikely ways to fix itself. There’s a reason this isn’t legal, but I promise we did the math right here.”

The warmth of being recognized had changed to a low, fluttery sort of excitement. Jess rubbed her arm, thinking. “You said here. Are there other mes other places?”

 “So many. I just juggled numbers until I found one where you were still a writer and a good person and about to die. You’re gonna say yes, aren’t you? Because now I’ve met you and it’s going to suck if I have to watch you get misted.”

Jess shook her head, amusement rather than denial. The American’s slang made her a little hard to follow. “I’d like to- but what about your me? The Jess in your world? Won’t she be upset to have a double?”

Sam bounced on her heels, then overbalanced and had to grab at her dog’s harness for support. “We asked her if it was okay. It started as a joke, really, before we realized it was possible. She wanted us to find an au where creativity was banned, but, uh, there was no TV or anything those places and your fic is awesome. Also most of those yous were freedom fighter types.” She grinned again. “You’re usually a badass in the dystopian verses. You wrote the New Declaration of Human Rights in the last one.”

It was absurd to feel so proud of that. Jess found herself smiling anyway. “Well. Bravo, Dystopian Me.”

Brakes squealed, unmistakably closer, and Wellsy barked. Sam checked her watch thing. “Twenty seconds.”

Jess wiped her face, surprised to find it had stopped raining. “Is it a good place? Your world, I mean?”

Sam made a see-sawing gesture. “Eh. A little better than here, but nothing crazy. Oh, hey, marriage equality passed in Ireland and chocolate never went extinct.” Green light spread up Sam’s arm from the watch, arcing over to cover Wellsy. “That’s our ride. You’re gonna want to hold your breath, interdimensional space kind of smells like socks.” She stuck her glowing hand out, palm up.

It wasn’t, all things considered, a hard decision.

 


	2. Basements are Better Than Closets: the Original Version

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I put the original version of this ficlet here since e says it's more likely. Actually the only thing changed is that she's got a wife trying to kill her, the rest is still the same.

On top of everything, it was raining.

Jess tried to ignore it as she threw her weight against the tire iron, wrestling with a rusty lug nut. Rain wasn’t the worst thing to happen today. It didn’t even come close. That honor went to the disc in her handbag, the collected work of a detective she’d paid to follow her wife this past week. Jess had been worried about an affair. Instead Collette was hanging around seedy pubs looking for muscle.

For a killer, actually. Her wife was trying to have her murdered.

It was ridiculous. Maybe the advance on her new book was big, but it was nothing compared to what she could earn in the future. Collette couldn’t see past the six figure check to the real payout. If Jess were writing this murder mystery, she'd have the killer wait for movie rights before finding an assassin.

Then again, she hadn’t married Collette for her brains. There'd been a rally when Ireland upheld the marriage equality ban, a hundred same-sex couples marrying symbolically in front of city hall. She met Collette at the organizational meeting a week before. Then it turned out that one of the staffers had actually filed for marriage licenses, so the symbolic marriage was less symbol and more marriage than intended. Collette had been sweet, though, and fairly enthusiastic about experimentation. It was nice having someone home at night. Jess stalled past the annulment window and just... went along with things.

Not exactly her finest hour.

Still, she’d caught on in time. The police were probably arresting Collette right now, and the publicity could only help sell books. She would be fine. Maybe her pride stung, maybe she wondered how she could have been so foolish, but she would move on. Lesson learned. No need to-

“Hey! E- I mean, uh, ma’am, can you come here for a sec?”

Jess blew wet bangs from her face and looked up. A woman stood on the sidewalk, rain streaming down her red pigtails. She had an oversized golden retriever by her side. A second look showed the dog’s harness, and Jess scrambled to her feet. “Are you all right?” she said, coming around the boot. “Is your guide dog turned around? I’m afraid I’ve got a flat, but I can call you a cab.”

The woman blinked at her, then at the dog. Her face split in an embarrassed smile. “My eyes are fine, it’s my head that’s broken. You’re Jessica Meats, aren’t you? The writer?”

A warm flush filled Jess’s chest. She didn’t get recognized often, even by her pen name. “I am, yes. You’re a reader, then?”

“Oh man, you have no idea,” the woman said, still blushing. “I’m pretty much your biggest fan. Not like you don’t have a lot, I mean Lady X probably beats me for comments and honestly I couldn’t have gotten the TDT without Echo’s help, but I’m the one who found this ‘verse so I think that tips me over the top.”

Nothing she said made sense. That should have set off some kind of alarms, but Jess found herself intrigued. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Right, yeah, just…” Something beeped. The woman looked down at a wide flat watch on her wrist. Green numbers were counting down from the low hundreds, one per second. She bit her lip. “So, uh, hi. I’m Sam, this is Wellsy . We’re from another dimension and we’d like to take you back with us. Everything’s all set up, you won’t have to get a job or anything and I swear we won’t lock you in a basement. Not actually, I mean it’s a basement apartment but you have your own door and stuff. Will you come?”

Any reasonable person would run screaming for the hills.

Writers were not often considered reasonable people.

“Is this a one-way trip?” Jess asked instead of backing away slowly. “Can I go look and come back?”

“Um. No?” Sam sounded apologetic. “You’re actually about to die in this verse, it’s why we picked it. Some asshole in a fuel truck slams into you while you’re changing the tire.”

That gave her a nasty jolt. “What, I just die?”

“Yeah, it’s why I only have- shit- two and a half minutes to convince you. The TDT bubble bursts when your time is up. That’s Temporary Dimensional Transit, this thing I’ve got here.”

Jess looked over her shoulder. She thought she could hear a truck, though that could have been her imagination. “Won’t the police be worried when they don’t find my body? If I came?”

Blue eyes lit with laughter. “Nope. The driver has a, uh, friend with him. In the cab. There’s a pretty hot fire, they don’t recover much. Even if you stay there’s not enough to prove there was more than one woman, so you might as well come with.”

“What happens if I just go somewhere else before the truck comes?”

“You crash coming back from your wife's trial and I get in, like, so much trouble with the Temporal Authorities,” Sam confessed. “You’d be okay in our world because I’m bringing you to my timeline, but here temporal physics will just start finding increasingly unlikely ways to fix itself. There’s a reason this isn’t legal, but I promise we did the math right here.”

The warmth of being recognized had changed to a low, fluttery sort of excitement. Jess rubbed her arm, thinking. “You said here. Are there other mes other places?”

 “So many. I just juggled numbers until I found one where you were still a writer and a good person and about to die. You’re gonna say yes, aren’t you? Because now I’ve met you and it’s going to suck if I have to watch you get misted.”

Jess shook her head, amusement rather than denial. The American’s slang made her a little hard to follow. “I’d like to- but what about your me? The Jess in your world? Won’t she be upset to have a double?”

Sam bounced on her heels, then overbalanced and had to grab at her dog’s harness for support. “We asked her if it was okay. It started as a joke, really, before we realized it was possible. She wanted us to find an au where creativity was banned, but, uh, there was no TV or anything those places and your fic is awesome. Also most of those yous were freedom fighter types.” She grinned again. “You’re usually a badass in the dystopian verses. You wrote the New Declaration of Human Rights in the last one.”

It was absurd to feel so proud of that. Jess found herself smiling anyway. “Well. Bravo, Dystopian Me.”

Brakes squealed, unmistakably closer, and Wellsy barked. Sam checked her watch thing. “Twenty seconds.”

Jess wiped her face, surprised to find it had stopped raining. “Is it a good place? Your world, I mean?”

Sam made a see-sawing gesture. “Eh. A little better than here, but nothing crazy. Oh, hey, marriage equality passed in Ireland and chocolate never went extinct.” Green light spread up Sam’s arm from the watch, arcing over to cover Wellsy. “That’s our ride. You’re gonna want to hold your breath, interdimensional space kind of smells like socks.” She stuck her glowing hand out, palm up.

It wasn’t, all things considered, a hard decision.

 


End file.
